Ethiopian Airlines Gets Record Profit of 6B Birr

February 11, 2017 - Ethiopian Airlines made a record high net profit of six billion birr (273 million dollars) in the 2015-2016 fiscal year ending June 2016, according to the Reporter.

Ethiopian Airlines Group CEO Tewolde Gebremariam told The Reporter in an exclusive interview that the airline registered record high operating revenue of 55 billion birr and a net profit of six billion birr. The revenue increased by 10.3 percent while net profit has shown a whopping increase of 70 percent. In the 2014-2015 fiscal year, the airline made 49.4 billion birr revenue and a net profit of 3.5 billion birr.

In the 2015-2016 fiscal year Ethiopian transported 7.6 million passengers and 270,000 tons of cargo. “It was a very good year for Ethiopian,” Tewolde said.

The CEO said that the 2015-2016 was a challenging year for the African airline industry. “Because of the decline in oil price, demand for air travel has decreased. Our revenue from oil exporting countries was less,” he said. The economies of oil producing countries like Nigeria, Angola, Cameroon, Gabon, Equatorial Guinea, Chad, Congo-Brazzaville, Sudan and Egypt were seriously affected by the sudden decline of oil price in the global market.

Tewolde said the more difficult challenge was the shortage of foreign currency created in those countries particularly in Nigeria, Angola, Sudan and Egypt as a result of the oil price decline.

“Right now we have more than 220 million dollars in local currencies in those countries. Mainly, in Nigeria, Angola, and Sudan and we have a small amount in Egypt. We have in total 220 million dollars in local currency trapped there for more than a year. You can imagine what that means on our liquidity, cash flow because more than 70 percent of our expanses are in US dollars. So that has created a very strong challenge for the airline,” Tewolde said. (Reporter)